1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image forming apparatus which is provided with an image forming means and has an insert function of conveying insert sheets directly from an inserter tray bypassing the image forming means to be inserted between output sheets having images formed thereon by the image forming means, a method of controlling the image forming apparatus, and a storage medium storing a program for executing the method.
2. Prior Art
There has been conventionally known an image forming apparatus which is provided with an image forming means and has an insert function of conveying insert sheets directly from an inserter tray bypassing the image forming means to be inserted between output sheets having images formed thereon by the image forming means.
In the conventional image forming apparatus, although an output mode such as a cover sheet mode, an interleaved sheet mode, or other modes can be designated as a manner of feeding sheets from an inserter tray, a manner of stacking sheets on the inserter tray cannot be designated, which may give rise to problems depending upon the state of stacked sheets. For example, when an insert sheet or other sheets have jammed and can no longer be used, usually, a recovery process is carried out by conveying another insert sheet of the same page from the inserter tray to replace the insert sheet involved in the jam. In the conventional image forming apparatus, however, there is a possibility that an insert sheet of a wrong page is selected from among sheets stacked on the inserter tray and conveyed.
Further, in the conventional image forming apparatus, both ordinary sheets on which images are to be formed by the image forming means and insert sheets are successively conveyed, so that the above recovery process needs to be carried out both on the image forming means and means for conveying insert sheets, which requires considerable labor and time by the user and complicates the control operation.